Senate President Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri filed on Wednesday, Nov. 16 a resolution forming a Select Oversight Committee to investigate government agencies’ use of their controversial confidential and intelligence funds amounting to P9.2 billion.

This followed objections by the Senate minority bloc led by Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III to the allocation of P500 million in confidential funds for the Office of the Vice President and P150 million for the Department of Education (DepEd).

Vice President Sara Duterte is the DepEd secretary. She ran for the vice presidential seat alongside former senator Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr., who ran for the presidency in the May, 2022 elections. Both won.

The House of Representatives headed by Speaker Martin Romualdez and the Senate headed by Zubiri who ran and won under the Marcos camp in the May, 2022 elections would still have to form their Bicameral Conference Committee members to fine tune the conflicting versions of the budget of the two Houses of Congress.

Romualdez is the cousin of President Marcos.

“It has long been the practice of the Senate to constitute a Select Oversight Committee for confidential and intelligence funds,” Zubiri said.

“Since the 10th Congress, the Senate has always formed the Select Oversight Committee, and we are going to continue that for the 19th Congress,’’ he pointed out.

The 2023 General Appropriations Bill (GAB) marks P9.2 billion for confidential and intelligence funds—with P4.3 billion as confidential and P4.9 billion as intelligence.

“It is our job, as an independent and democratic Senate, to keep watch over the use of the national budget. That is especially true for these sensitive funds, which are not subject to the auditing rules and procedures of the Commission on Audit. Being that we cannot identify the particulars of their usage ahead of time, the Committee is our way of subjecting these funds to checks and balances,’’ Zubiri said.

“These funds are important in allowing our agencies to conduct necessary programs, operations, and activities for the safety and security of our people. But we need to be vigilant about how these funds are used, which will be the function of our Special Oversight Committee,’’ he pointed out.

The proposed committee will be composed of three members of the majority, one minority, and will be headed by the Senate President.

Pimentel giving confidential funds to civilian agencies should be stopped ‘’because that is not a good practice".

He said he would be looking at the reasonableness of intelligence funds for law enforcement agencies.

He said that collapsing P700 million from the Office of the Vice President’s budget would still leave P1.8 billion next year and ‘’it will still be able to survive".

He also said the P150 million in confidential funds for DepEd should be deleted and given to urgent needs of the department such as classrooms.